Green tea 'helps keep you active'

Drinking green tea could help you keep active and agile as you grow older, Japanese research suggests.

The three-year study of around 14,000 adults aged 65 or over found that significant consumption of green tea reduced the risk of developing disability or problems with simple daily physical tasks such as getting dressed.

Those who drank five or more cups of green tea each day had a 7% chance of developing 'functional disability', nearly half the risk for those who had less than a cup a day (13%), the study found.

Study leader Yasutake Tomata, from Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, said: 'Green tea consumption is significantly associated with a lower risk of incident functional disability, even after adjustment for possible confounding factors.'

While the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, did not say drinking green tea was solely responsible for keeping people sprightly into older age, it is known the drink contains antioxidant chemicals which could help prevent cell damage that causes disease.

Copyright Press Association 2012